Meg Smaker Photo: supplied
Meg Smaker's 2022 documentary film about a de-radicalisation centre triggered such a backlash around the time of its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival that it was effectively blacklisted.
But Jihad Rehab, later renamed The UnRedacted, has gone on to sell out screenings in America, receive support from presenters, audiences and prominent American Muslims. It played in New Zealand at the Doc Edge Film Festival last year and Smaker will attend a special one-off screening in Auckland in late April to launch this year's festival.
The film follows four former Guantánamo Bay detainees who had been transferred and now detained by the Saudi Government in a ‘rehab center,’ to ‘de-radicalize’ them.
Smaker says the participants gave consent to be filmed and were able to speak freely. But other film-makers, led mostly by Muslim women, argue it is an unethical project that does a disservice to its main characters.
